OXFORD, Miss. -- In the 1960s, when William Faulkner still walked the land, while Eudora Welty produced some of her finest work and Willie Morris moved "North Toward Home," their native state was known as a place where more people wrote books than read them.
Books in Mississippi were sold in pharmacies equipped with rotating racks featuring Mickey Spillane thrillers, or sometimes in department store nooks displaying Bibles and inspirational "literature."
But in recent years, a crop of small bookstores catering to serious readers grew up in the state, and Mississippi's independent booksellers find themselves in the middle of an escalating national feud with superstores such as Barnes & Noble, Borders and Books-A-Million.
After nurturing their shops into a profitable existence, local entrepreneurs in Mississippi and other points around the country are struggling against chain stores offering cheaper prices. As Richard Howorth, owner of Square Books in Oxford and president of the American Booksellers Association, says, "In 1991, when Barnes & Noble and Borders began to expand, there were 5,200 members of the ABA. Today, there are 3,300."
The plaint is a variation of the Wal-Mart syndrome: cut-rate behemoths drive mom-and-pop stores out of existence. But rather than return to the days before bookstores flourished, the independent booksellers are fighting back.
The ABA, which represents private bookstore owners, filed an antitrust suit against Barnes & Noble and Borders last March, charging the chains with undercutting the independent booksellers through "secret and illegal deals" with publishing houses.
By obtaining "disproportionate discounting and additional credit" unavailable to the independents, Howorth said, the chains are able to offer more attractive prices. For example, Tom Wolfe's new novel, "A Man in Full," listed at $28.95, sells for $20 at the superstores.
The situation was exacerbated last month by revelations that Barnes & Noble, the nation's biggest bookseller, planned to purchase the country's leading wholesale distributor, Ingram Book Group. (Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat sympathetic to the independents, has called for the Justice Department to investigate the antitrust implications of the merger.)
In an interview at his store overlooking the historic courthouse square that Faulkner immortalized, Howorth said that if the Barnes & Noble acquisition goes through, small booksellers who buy from Ingram would be faced with "the realistic threat of doing business with a company showing a desire to put everyone else out of business."
